Following Okta's Strong Friday Debut, Newest Tech IPO Could Outpace Unicorn Snap

Making The Opening Moves

Okta Inc OKTA, an enterprise technology company, began trading on the Nasdaq Friday after offering 11 million shares in an IPO. Priced at $17 per share, at the upper end of the $15–$17 per share band, which was a spike from the initial offer price of $13–$15 per share, the offer valued at the company at $187 million.

Other Talked About Tech IPOs

Another enterprise software company Mulesoft Inc MULE IPOed its shares earlier this year. Mulesoft's main product, the Anypoint Platform, helps to turn disparate applications, databases and devices into consumable and discoverable APIs.

The 13-million share IPO was priced at $17 per share and the shares listed at $24.09 on March 20, up a staggering 42 percent. On its debut, the stock gained about 38 percent.

After bouncing around, the stock is still trading with decent gains of about 40 percent from its offer price.

Snap Inc, the parent company of ephemeral photo and video sharing platform Snapchat, turned out to be the much-hyped IPO thus far this year. The company priced its 200 million offering at $17 per share. The stock was listed on March 2, 2017, at a 41 percent premium over its offer price and closed the session up 44 percent at $24.48 per share.

However, since then, Snap has had a roller-coaster ride in the market, dropping to an intraday low of $18.90 in mid-March. The stock closed Thursday's session at $20.57, up 21 percent from its offer price, but at a 14 percent discount to its listing price and 16 percent lower than its closing price on the day of listing.

Okta's Business And Financials

Okta, the newbie on the Street, is a provider of identity for enterprises. The company's Identity Cloud enables customers to securely connect people to technology. The company, founded in 2009, said in its S-1 filing with the SEC that its revenues rose 109 percent to $85.9 million in 2016 from $41 million in 2015.

Citing investment intensiveness, the company said it reported a net loss of $76.3 million for 2016, wider than the 2015 loss of $59.1 million. In 2016, the company expended $28.76 million on R&D, $77.92 million on sales and marketing and $19.20 million in general and administrative expenses.

Prior to the offering, Sequoia Capital owned 21.2 percent stake in Okta; Andreessen Horowitz, 19.6 percent; Greylock, 16.9 percent; and Khosla, 8.1 percent.

Okta shares listed at $23.56, up 38.6 percent, and sustained the gains over the course of Friday's session.

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